The prior hearing: what to do when a draft assessment arrives

Simona manages a small limited company in Bologna. The Agenzia delle Entrate sends her a draft assessment, a schema di atto: it disputes costs it considers unrelated to the business and proposes 18,000 € of extra tax. This is not an assessment yet. The law gives her at least sixty days to reply, inspect the file and perhaps change the final outcome.

The Charter: the rules of dealing with the tax office

Law 212 of 27 July 2000, the Statuto dei diritti del contribuente or Taxpayers' Rights Charter, sets out how the tax administration and citizens must behave towards each other. The Agenzia's page on taxpayer rights highlights several: information, knowledge of the acts addressed to you, clarity and reasons, protection of good faith, and set-off against credits.

The right to reasons, for example, means that every assessment or settlement notice must explain why it was issued. Good faith means that the relationship rests on mutual cooperation and fairness. These are broad principles, but they become concrete the moment an office wants to claim more tax, and that is where the prior hearing comes in.

The Charter has been heavily updated in recent years. Article 6-bis turned the prior hearing into a general rule, Articles 10-quater and 10-quinquies rewrote the self-correction power, and Legislative Decree 219 of 2023 reformed the ruling request. This first module covers the hearing; the second deals with the other two tools.

The hearing principle

Article 6-bis, in the text served by the Gazzetta Ufficiale, requires every act that can be appealed on its own before the tax courts to be preceded by an informed and effective hearing, on pain of being voidable. Put simply, before it demands anything, the administration must show the taxpayer what it intends to demand and listen to the reply.

Both adjectives matter. Informed means the taxpayer must know the objections and the evidence behind them, not just the final figure. Effective means having the time and a real chance to influence the result, and having one's observations actually read. A hearing that happens only on paper, with no time to answer, meets neither test.

Voidable is not the same as void. If the office skips a hearing that was due, the act stands until the taxpayer challenges it; the defect has to be raised in an appeal. Anyone who receives an assessment that was not preceded by a draft should therefore ask at once whether that act was one the rule covers.

Acts that are excluded

The second paragraph removes the right to a hearing for automated and substantially automated acts, prompt settlements and formal checks of tax returns, as identified by decree of the Minister of Economy and Finance, and for reasoned cases where collection is at real risk. The precise list therefore sits in the ministerial decree.

The irregularity notices that follow automated and formal checks belong precisely to this area. They have a dialogue of their own, made of help desks, corrections and documents, and the Agenzia points out that they cannot even be appealed on their own. The Article 6-bis hearing concerns genuine assessments instead.

Decree-Law 39 of 2024, converted by Law 67 of 2024, then laid down an authentic interpretation of the article.

The first paragraph applies only to acts that contain a tax claim, not to those for which the rules already provide a specific form of dialogue, nor to recovery of non-existent tax credits. Refusals of refund claims also count among the excluded acts, depending partly on their value.

The practical test for a non-specialist is two questions. Does it demand more tax? Can I appeal against it on its own before the tax court? If both answers are yes and the act is not among the exclusions, a draft should have come first. If none did, that is a point to raise with your adviser.

The draft assessment and the sixty days

The third paragraph sets out the mechanism. The administration sends the draft act in a way that ensures the taxpayer can know about it, and allows a period of no less than sixty days in total. During that time the taxpayer may file counter-arguments and, on request, inspect the documents in the file and take copies.

The act cannot be adopted before that period has run out. This is a strong safeguard: the office cannot close early simply because it is in a hurry, even if it believes it already holds all the evidence. The period is a floor, so a draft may allow longer, but never less.

The law also protects the office from running out of time. If the hearing period ends after the deadline for adopting the act, or if fewer than one hundred and twenty days separate the two, the time bar moves to the hundred-and-twentieth day after the hearing period ends. Dialogue, in short, does not cost the office its power to assess.

For the taxpayer this rule has a practical consequence: a draft received near the end of the year is not a sign that the office needs a quick answer. The time to reply exists, and it is worth using all of it to build a documented response rather than sending something rushed in the first few days.

Making the most of the period

The first step is to ask for access to the file. The draft summarises the objections, but the documents they rest on, such as inspection reports, third-party replies and bank data, sit in the file. Reading them shows whether the office misread a contract, mixed up two invoices or overlooked a payment.

The second step is to write orderly counter-arguments. A reply that takes the objections one by one, giving for each the fact, the rule and the document that contradicts it, works far better than a general defence. Every attachment should be cited at the point where it matters, so that the reader finds the proof straight away.

A simple method keeps everything in view. Build a table with one row per objection in the draft and three columns: what the office claims, what the business answers, which document proves it. Rows with no document show where to keep looking, and weak rows suggest where a settlement might make sense.

If the business has an adviser, split the time sensibly: a first stretch to gather contracts, invoices, bank statements and correspondence, then a second to write. Reaching the last week still without documents is the most common way to waste a period that the law deliberately made generous.

The third step is to keep proof of sending. Counter-arguments do two jobs: persuade the office now and, if that fails, show a judge later that the final act ignored them. The fourth paragraph requires the act to give reasons with reference to the observations the office does not accept.

A final act that repeats the draft word for word, without explaining why the objections received were rejected, is exposed to appeal. That is why counter-arguments should be written with a future reader in mind, the judge, and not only for the official who receives them today.

The draft and the negotiated settlement

A draft assessment also opens another route: seeking agreement. The accertamento con adesione, a negotiated settlement described on an Agenzia page, lets the taxpayer fix the tax due and avoid a dispute. It is an agreement between taxpayer and office, possible before or after the assessment notice, provided no appeal has been filed.

Its main attraction is financial: under a settlement, administrative penalties are due at one third of the statutory minimum. Agreement is reached through discussion, possibly over several meetings, and the taxpayer may be represented or assisted by an agent. The procedure is complete only once the agreed sums are paid.

Payment is made in a single sum within twenty days of the settlement being drawn up, or in equal quarterly instalments, at most eight, rising to sixteen when the sums exceed 50,000 euros. Instalments after the first carry interest from the day after the first instalment's due date.

After the act: acceptance or appeal

If the act is issued anyway, two options remain before going to court. The first is acceptance, the acquiescenza: accepting the assessment, giving up both the appeal and the negotiated settlement, and paying the sums due within the appeal period, normally sixty days from service. In return, the penalties imposed fall to one third.

The second is an appeal to the first-instance tax court. It is the route for anyone who considers the act unlawful or unfounded, including those who want to rely on a missing hearing or on reasons that ignore the counter-arguments. Choosing well presupposes having used the sixty days of the draft properly.

The three routes do not cost the same. A settlement cuts penalties but needs agreement on the whole amount; acceptance cuts them with no negotiation but takes the act as it stands; an appeal keeps every point open but risks the full penalty if it fails. A well-run hearing also shows which route fits best.

Voluntary correction, the ravvedimento operoso, remains available too, but only until an act that rules it out is served. Anyone who spots their own mistake before receiving any act would do well to correct it spontaneously, with reduced penalties that no later procedure can match.